


Contrast

by OutRAGme_985



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Thorinduil - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1517219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OutRAGme_985/pseuds/OutRAGme_985





	Contrast

It’s the same every day. I see you there, laying in the hospital bed. Your pale hair resting harshly against those starchy blue pillows. When I reach out to touch it I can feel that its growing greasy and unkept, a sure sign of how long you’ve been here. Too long, weeks too long.

It kills me.

I can remember it clearly, I’ll never forget the look on your face. You were sitting on the back of the couch. Just like now, the grey of your leathers shone out against the white suede. You’ve always been that way. I’ve always seen you, like you’re the only thing in the world that has any real colour. It was like that then, the bluish florescent lights reflecting off of the dark leather, your neon green socks looking completely ridiculous. You were smiling at me, swirling your wine around in the glass to taunt me. I hate it when you sit on the back of the couch, it smushes the cushions out of shape. I hate it and you know it. You do it to tease me, to get a rise out of me. The red wine just makes it that much worse. 

I was laughing with you, even though I was trying my damnedest not to. Your smile is infectious like that, mocking me, and even though my heart was jumping every time you moved you kept on going, dipping yourself over the back of the couch and swirling your glass around with abandon. It was a scene we’ve replayed a thousand times before it seems. 

This time, it was different.

I remember how your laughter stopped, your voice sounding like it choked on itself. Your neck stretched out and your muscles tensed, your fingers gripping tightly around your glass. I saw your eyes roll up into the back of your head, I was out of my chair and moving across the room but I wasn’t quick enough. You fell forwards, hitting your head on the edge of the coffee table. That fucking ugly piece of shit that I begged you not to buy but you ignored me anyways. That evil fucking table. It was like it pulled you down, the crack of your skull hitting the sharp corner makes me sick to my stomach to think about. 

It was loud, so fucking loud. 

I think I hesitated, I don’t remember. It was a sound I never imagined before, something I can’t describe but will haunt my dreams forever. It was so violent, so dull for someone who has never been dull in their entire life. 

I could see the blood before I got to you. The dark stain against the wood of the table, and the bright red spreading through the pale rug. 

_“Thran! No!”_

I grabbed you. I know that I was supposed to leave you until the paramedics came, something about brain injuries and spinal column damage. There was no way in fuck that I was leaving you. No way in hell that you weren’t going to be in my arms. I turned you over in my lap, there was blood everywhere. I can remember your eyes, open and white with your cornea’s pulled upwards like they were on strings, jerking right and left.

_“Thran! Oh my god, Thran! What the fuck!”_

I could feel your body tensing up, you started shaking and jerking, long arms and legs jumping off the floor. I remember your hands tensing up like claws, scraping across the fabric of my clothes and pulling at the open air. I’ll never forget taking your hand in mine and holding it as tight as I could. It didn’t feel like you, you weren’t in there. Even when your hand clasped around mine I knew you weren’t holding me. 

I remember picking you up and running to the bathroom. I sat down on the floor next to the bathtub, fumbling with my phone long enough to dial 911 and place it on the corner of the counter.

_“Nine one one, what is your emergency?”_

_“Thranduil, he’s bleeding there’s blood everywhere! Oh fuck! Please, please help me!”_

_“Where is he bleeding from?”_

_“His head, his fucking head! He, he fell! He hit his face, there’s so much blood! He’s fucking jerking around oh god, Thran! Oh god please help! Thranduil!”_

I know she was talking to me, I’ve seen it on TV. I know she was telling me to calm down and to elevate your head or something. I know she was telling me that they were on their way and everything was going to be okay, but I don’t remember hearing it. All I can remember is the blood, the way your body was moving and the fact that I couldn’t stop it. I remember screaming your name when the jerking stopped. 

You went still. There was no movement, all your muscles went limp and your grey eyes dropped back down to a dead stare. 

I screamed. 

They’ll tell you a different story if you ask them. If you talk to the paramedics who broke in the door and found us laying there on the bathroom floor. They’ll say that you suffered a severe aneurysm, that the trauma to your head from the fall triggered a massive seizure, and that the fact that it stopped on its own was a good sign. They’ll say that they rushed you to the hospital, and that the coiling done to stop the internal bleeding was a success. That with your age, with your health you're bound to wake up soon. That you were lucky, that everything is going to be okay.

I don’t know how to tell them that they’re wrong.

Your son comes in every day to see you. He holds your hand and gives you kisses and tells you stories about how much he loves you and can’t wait for you to wake up. Our friends come to see you, they tell me how good you look and how lucky you are that I was there for you when it happened. As if I would have been anywhere else.

I don’t know how to tell them. I don’t have the heart to tell them.

How do I let them know that I can feel you, and I can tell that you’re not in there anymore.

His heart is beating, is what they’ll tell me. He’s breathing on his own, he’ll be just fine. The longest coma recorded from an aneurysm was only a few weeks long. It’s not that they’re lying, they just don’t know.

You’re gone.  
You’re not in there anymore.

When the seizure stopped, I didn’t scream because I was afraid you had died. 

I screamed because I felt your death. 

I felt you, that energy and vibrance that’s all your own, I felt it slip out and run itself across my skin. It sent a shiver up my spine, it made all of the hair on my body stand on end. Everything that I had ever felt before from you ran straight through me. The faint tingle that I always knew from every touch, every hug or kiss penetrated me like water running through a sieve. I could feel my hands on your skin, but the glimmer was no longer there. You had left, you were gone. 

_“Thranduil NO! No! No! No don’t leave me here Thran!”_

I gathered you up in my arms and pulled you into my lap. I ran my hands over your face and pulled your hair back, plastering it away from your eyes and smearing your blood through my fingers. I started to shake your face, trying to make your eyes focus on mine again. Give me that cocky look again, that fucking penetrating and ever judging stare.

_“Thran wake up! Come back to me, you fuck! You have to come back you can’t leave me here! Please Thran! No! Oh god Thranduil please don’t do this, you have to come back!”_

 

So here I am. Sitting here across from your body. I touch you and I talk to you because I don’t know what else to do. How do I mourn you when your body still lives? How can I leave this place when they believe you are still alive? Can you feel me when I touch your body? Can you hear me when I say your name?

The only thing I feel is cold. 

I don’t want to do this without you Thranduil. I’m afraid. I’m afraid to leave and come after you because I don’t know where to go. I sit here and I look at how pale your hair is, how deeply it stands out against the deep blue of the starchy hospital pillows. Even without your soul your body contrasts with the world around it. It used to be our world, we could have it all. I don’t want it without you. 

I don’t know if you can feel it, I don’t know if you’re somewhere watching me and can see me but I crawl onto the bed next to you and run my fingers over your cheekbones. I don’t know what they’ll say, and I don’t know how long it will take them to realize you aren’t coming back. 

I’m terrified.

I have no idea where you’ve gone. Wherever you are, you’re there alone. Ever since that first kiss, that heated night of mingled lust and frustration, we’e never been apart, and you must be so scared. It’s my job to take care of you, to make sure that you’re safe. I have no idea where to look for you, there’s no road map to where you’ve gone. I do the only thing I can right now, I lean in and kiss the skin that used to be yours.

“I’m coming for you, my love.”


End file.
